


Static

by Lizabeth_Shabow



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angry Dick Grayson, Awkward Damian Wayne, Awkward Jason Todd, Batfamily (DCU), Depressed Tim Drake, Drugs, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Smart Tim Drake, Suicide, Tim Drake Being an Idiot, Tim Drake Needs a Hug, Tim Drake-centric, Unreliable Narrator, nobody uses them tim just busts a deal, tim is a liar dont listen to him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-10
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:07:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23571319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lizabeth_Shabow/pseuds/Lizabeth_Shabow
Summary: “Get home,” Robin said, without as much bite as Tim had been expecting. He disappeared into the shadows.Tim was alone in the alley, surrounded by goons zip-tied against the wall, a stash of highly lethal drugs in his belt. He might as well go back to the cave.And then, if Robin wanted him to go home, he would.
Comments: 28
Kudos: 296





	Static

**Author's Note:**

  * For [questimrk](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=questimrk).



> hey make sure you look at the tags. please be safe 
> 
> this is for my friend who bugs me to find her depressed timothy jackson fics all the time

Nights in Gotham were cold, fog settling like soaked blankets over the shoulders of those suicidal enough to be out past dark. Tim had never been made to match Gotham’s frozen breaths, exhaled from over the harbor and curling between buildings like wafts of smoke from icy lungs, not like Bruce in his kevlar and muscle. Even Dick, in circus spandex, could flip through the fog like it was the middle of summer, witty retorts not at all slowed by a cold tongue. 

Tim felt icicles forming in his hair, fragments of it slicing open his exposed cheeks. He had ditched the cowl design ages ago and now he was regretting it, face protected with only the thin line of the domino’s fabric glued over his eyes. His nose was red enough to match his suit, or at least look like Jason had smeared Tim’s compact of blush across it. His fingers weren’t stiff yet, hidden behind the insulation of his gloves, but even that would give way soon. This wasn’t his cold temp suit, the one that could survive in the arctic and keep him alive. This was his Gotham suit, designed to be temperature correcting but more focused on spaces to conceal antidotes to Fear Toxin and Joker Gas. 

He heard gravel crunch and whipped his head behind him, batarangs sliding cool and half-frozen between his gloved fingers. Nothing was there. Tim would pass it off as a cat, maybe, if it wasn’t cold enough freeze tears before they’d hit the ground. Nothing safe was out right now. 

A tap on his shoulder. Tim swang with the batarang, startled and pissed with himself for letting the attacker get this close, when his wrist was caught in a bruising grip. 

“Hey, Timberlake,” Red Hood said. Jason. It was Jason. Tim had tried to slice him open and it was only his—

What was Jason, exactly? He was Bruce’s son, Dick’s brother, and had a hand in raising Damian while both of them were being brainwashed by Ra’s. He had tried to kill Tim as soon as he could tell left from right again, made his position clear on how he felt about Tim wearing his uniform,  _ Dick’s _ uniform. He knew Jason didn’t like him, but that didn’t mean that he was going to slice open his fucking arm for sneaking up on him. 

“Hello,” Tim said, “Can I help you?” Dick called it his customer service voice, when the  _ what do you want _ refused to come out with all the biting venom that laced it in his head. Tim couldn’t read Jason’s face behind his helmet (keeping his face nice and cozy warm, Tim bets, lucky bastard) but he can read the set of his shoulders as they bunched and rolled under his leather jacket, could read the subtle shift of his weight, sliding one foot back on the heel barely a half an inch, the way his hands flexed with the desire to put them on his guns. 

“What’re ya doin’ out here, Replacement?” Jason asked, “Y’ll freeze yer goddamn dick off.” 

Tim should have known better than to think Jason would give half a shit about his welfare, the anxiety in his shifting posture was probably just because he was barely able to look at Tim, the one who replaced him, the pretender that couldn’t even survive a night on Gotham’s rooftops in the winter. Tim smiled and said: 

“Stalking a drug bust, you can go.” He said it in a way that would have made Janet proud, his tone thanking his target for their concern but reassuring that they need not waste their time with something as frivolous as helping Tim. They shouldn’t bother themselves with the trouble. 

That’s right, he didn’t need help. He didn’t deserve it. 

Jason shrugged, but there was something stiff in his chest and his hips, holding himself just the right way to portray thoughtless ease. Tim was aware it was creepy how well he could read body language and double meanings, could smell a lie on silver tongues before it had even been told. It didn’t stop him from using the skill, carefully cultivated by his mother and sharpened during his time as Robin. It just made him hide it. 

Fake it. Fake. Pretender. Tim couldn’t do anything other than pretend, and pretend, and  _ pretend _ . Nothing about him was real, he hid behind what people wanted from him and made them trust him, lied to them and betrayed that trust every time they chose to tell him something. 

It made his stomach turn, but he couldn’t stop himself from doing it. It was as easy as breathing, a crypt of dead birds’ fears resting on his chest. 

Jason was gone, and when had that happened? Tim sucked in a breath. He couldn’t afford to be slow on the field. If he fell, then that put everyone else in danger. It wouldn’t be a leap to guess who the rest of the bats were after him. 

The ledge of the roof was frozen. Tim didn’t slip, but it was a near thing, his boots’ traction was automated, helping correct when error was made on part of the wearer. It saved him from face planting into the drug deal he was busting, Bruce’s (unwillingly given) training correcting his balance and letting him trip his weight into a graceful flip. 

Thugs would never scatter into the night for him like they did the imposing silhouette of Batman or the shining gleam of Red Hood’s guns. Even the glint of Robin’s katana sparked more fear than the rounded edges of Red Robin’s staff. It wasn’t something that Tim bothered himself with, content in the knowledge that he wasn’t as good as those before him and had simply been a placeholder for the runner-up. It made sense for him to be the least feared and least respected by Gotham’s underbelly. 

He cracked one goon across the head with his staff, ducking into a roll when his feet his the frozen concrete of the alley to dodge the short spray of bullets over his head. He threw three batarangs in one fluid snap of his wrist, all of them slicing through the fingers of his marks. The guns clattered to the ground and Tim cracked his staff into the knee of one thug, making him cry out and stumble. He kicked him across the temple and bent backward out of the way of another’s fist, striking the inner part of the elbow with his palm. The goon cried out and his arm dropped useless and limp to his side. Tim ducked and weaved until all three of them were zip-tied and unconscious against the alley wall. 

Now, to find the drugs. It was a new formula, one they were planning on selling to kids and hopefully getting their parents hooked as well. It was highly lethal after the tenth dose, just long enough to have it spread through word of mouth. 

The sound of flesh hitting flesh came from behind him, and Tim whirled around, bo staff between him and the threat. It was Robin, katana held to a thug’s (not bound, not zip-tied against a wall) throat and a vicious, painful smirk showing off sharp teeth. 

“Ah, ah,” Robin drawled, soft and an excuse to move fang-like teeth, “Bad move.” 

The thug was unconscious before the whimper had finished leaving his throat. 

Tim had forgotten about that one, the very first one he cracked across the head when he landed from the rooftop. Bats didn’t make mistakes like that. He had been trained to avoid making mistakes like that. That could mean death, and death meant exposing everyone else’s identity along with his own. 

“Drake.” Robin scolded him with just his name, and that’s what Tim’s life had come to, hadn’t it, being belittled by 13-year-old boys and hiding behind a mask he pretended to deserve. 

“Names,” he said, on autopilot. It barely came past his frozen lips. Robin clicked his tongue and stalked toward him, cleaned katana held out to his side. Tim couldn’t fight the reflexive tensing of his abdomen and the way his fingers tightened around his staff. It hadn’t been so long ago that the kid had tried, several times, to kill him. Robin was a demon brat, not stupid, so he noticed (of course he did, he was perfect, genetically engineered to be better than everyone else and trained to make the most of it) and he stopped. That was new. 

“Drake,” he said again and Tim didn’t try to correct him this time, didn’t bother reminding him that Bruce had technically adopted him before his emancipation and his name was Drake-Wayne. Had anyone even told him? Something like Tim’s last names didn’t seem important enough to come up in conversations that didn’t even feature him. 

Bruce adopted him so he could take over being CEO, he doubted most of the bats remembered it even happened. He didn’t sign legal documents anymore, so none of them were confronted with visual proof to reinforce the idea, he wouldn’t be surprised if everyone except Alfred forgot. 

“It is unlike you to make such appalling errors,” Robin spoke loud and clear, something that came naturally to the brat. He was a natural-born leader, not like Tim who had to pretend and manipulate people into following him. 

“Tell me how you really feel,” Tim snapped, a witty Red Robin comeback without the standard grin. It was vicious and cold. He was never successful in bending his personality into a shape that fit Robin’s preference. It didn’t bother him, just another thing that he couldn’t do. It was fitting that it was Bruce’s only blood son, the real successor wasn’t fooled by a fake like Tim. 

“You should not be allowed on the field if you can’t even eliminate four idiotic wastes of flesh on your own.” Robin sniffed, sliding his katana into its sheath under his cape with a fluid twist of his wrist. It was like watching mercury melt. 

Tim knew that already, but there was work to be done and Bruce couldn’t do it alone. He had Dick and Jason and Damian, but none of them followed orders well, if at all. They were wild cards and Bruce needed someone who he could trust to do as he was told. Even if Tim didn’t do as perfectly as Bruce expected, at least he had done as ordered. 

Sometimes he couldn’t even do that right, but tonight wasn’t one of those nights. Or, it wasn’t supposed to be. 

“Get home,” Robin said, without as much bite as Tim had been expecting. He disappeared into the shadows. 

Tim was alone in the alley, surrounded by goons zip-tied against the wall, a stash of highly lethal drugs in his belt. He might as well go back to the cave. 

And then, if Robin wanted him to go home, he would. 

* * *

“What did you say?” Dick hissed, his voice low in a vicious whisper. All of the bats knew about the violent temper Dick tried to hide but it rarely made itself apparent against Damian. 

“I told him to go home!” Damian hissed back. Tim pressed his back against the locker room wall, hiding in the shadows. He was horrible for eavesdropping, but he wasn’t a good person anyway. This wouldn’t hurt him any worse. 

“Goddammit!” Dick yelled, slamming his hand into his locker. Tim could feel Damian closing himself off the more Dick showed his anger and it made him nauseous to be the cause of it. He wasn’t worth this. Dick had worked so hard to get Damian to trust him the year that Tim was looking for Bruce. 

Tim felt his head get light. He didn’t cry much anymore, but sometimes he would prefer to have the tears over the empty feeling in his chest and his head. He felt like he was stuffed with cotton, a faded static sound buzzing in the background like a forgotten TV that couldn’t find a channel.

“You can’t just say that stuff to him!” Dick finally snapped, voice at a roar. God, that one hurt. He knew that Dick hadn’t cared when he left the first time after he replaced him with Damian, but he didn’t know that he hated him  _ this _ much. He’d just make sure to stay out of his way so Dick didn’t have to look at him. 

Grayson? Maybe Dick didn’t want him to call him by the nickname anymore. It wasn't like he was going to find out. 

He left, slipped out using the shadows before he could hear more. He was going home anyway, away from the manor so he didn’t step on any toes. Damian told him to go home, and Tim knew he meant go back to his own manor next door. Dick probably thought he meant back to Bruce’s manor and that’s why he got so upset. 

It’s okay, he was leaving anyway. 

When he got home, he didn’t have any bags with him and he was wearing his civvies so he didn’t have anything to drop off or hide. He went to his bathroom. 

He thought about the best way to do it. His parents were dead, so it’d probably be a while before someone checked in. He didn’t want whoever found him to have to clean up a mess, it would probably be bad enough having to deal with him by itself. 

He didn’t want to take pills. 

Eventually, he found a pair of scissors in the mirror cabinet and knelt in front of the tub. He filled the bottom of it with a few inches of water so the blood wouldn’t stain the bottom as badly. 

He heard this way was supposed to be peaceful. He would have preferred to jump, to feel like he was flying before it ended, but that held too much of a risk of his identity being revealed and he had no way to do it out of costume. 

Even now, watching the red flower and spread in pretty patterns in the water below, he was thinking about himself. He was so selfish, wasn’t he? It was good that he was going to be gone soon. 

He’d finally be out of the way of Jason and Damian and the bats could all move on without the constant needle in their side. 

He was tired. He closed his eyes, resting his cheek on the rim of the tub.

**Author's Note:**

> in my docs this is titled "sad af timothy jackson"


End file.
